Juice Online Poetry & Art
                                                       Publishing since 1970		cover art for Juice online 2007 cd
2008
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Corey Mesler

Many of these poets have Books. Find them at Amazon Books: Just type in their names.
    Burying Mazzy



    I took the tools into the backyard.
    It was a hole I was to dig.
    Into the hole I was to place the body
    of my dog, dead now 3 days.
    The sky was the color of a bumper.
    If I could look up I would see something
    besides the body of my dog,
    dead now 3 days. If I could just start
    making the hole, fashioning its rigid sides,
    chopping through roots, I could
    think about something more concrete
    than the mortality of my dog.
    She weighed over 70 pounds. When
    that weight was in hands it felt
    like an opiate, a heavy heart.
    I dug that damn hole. I did not look
    into the halfdressed sky. I looked downward
    and downward. That hole was so deep
    I went blind. That hole eventually
    swallowed my dog, dead now 3 days.
    Into it also went part of me, the part
    that hugged that big dumb animal around
    the neck, the part that wept when the
    vet injected her. I see now that
    she had to die. I see now that we all do.
    These lessons are gained the hard way,
    with tools, under a chromium sky,
    inside the dark earth, wet with our blood.



Corey Mesler